Kerry favored as N.H. goes to cast ballots
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Primary contest among Democrats for third place
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By Paul West
Baltimore Sun National Staff
Originally published January 27, 2004
sunspot.net
PORTSMOUTH, N.H. - Sen. John Kerry of neighboring Massachusetts is favored to win the opening primary of the 2004 presidential contest today in New Hampshire and establish himself as the clear front-runner for the Democratic nomination.
Warning against overconfidence but sounding upbeat, the candidate said today's vote would "mark the beginning of the end of the Bush presidency. That's what this is about."
A subdued Howard Dean, struggling to overcome a weak finish in Iowa's caucuses, is running second in the latest statewide polls. The former governor from Vermont had led by wide margins in this state for months, and a poor primary showing could make it difficult for his campaign to recover.
Three candidates were in a tight contest for third place: Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut.
With seven states holding presidential tests one week from today, candidates who finish far back in New Hampshire could effectively be eliminated from contention. But all the Democratic candidates have said they intend to continue campaigning at least until next Tuesday.
The state's top election official has predicted a record primary turnout. A winter storm was forecast to reach New Hampshire late in the evening and will likely have little effect on the results.
Kerry, the leader by double digits in most opinion polls, crossed the state's frozen landscape by bus and helicopter in a final burst of campaign activity.
At an early-morning stop in the coastal town of Portsmouth, he already seemed to have the next round of primaries on his mind when an undecided voter asked about those who say he's even more liberal than Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, who has campaigned here for him.
"If the worst thing they can say about me is that I'm, quote, a liberal, or something, let's go," Kerry told a crowd of about 150 supporters, "Bring it on. I'll take that anywhere in the country."
Kerry ticked off a list of his positions, including "decent schools for people in the South," balanced budgets and more police on the streets.
"The South is not a foreign country, ladies and gentlemen, and we have to stand up and stop worrying about" name-calling from the Republicans, he said. "If all they want to do in this campaign is throw labels around, they've got a problem."
Polling indicated Kerry is regarded by likely primary voters as the Democrats' best chance to defeat President Bush. National voter surveys have also registered a large uptick in support for him since he won the first voter test in Iowa.
For much of the past year, though, Kerry's campaign had languished in the Granite State, as he was forced to answer repeated questions about his vote in favor of the Iraq war resolution. But talk about the war has all but vanished from Kerry's campaign, and voters seldom bring up the issue at his events.
Kerry's revival and Dean's slide have transformed the political climate here. If Kerry wins convincingly - some late polling put him ahead by up to 20 percentage points, though one of nine surveys done over the weekend showed just a 3-percent edge - he would be the undisputed front-runner heading into a five-week blitz of contests in more than two dozen states, including Maryland.
No Democratic candidate has lost the nomination after winning competitive contests in both Iowa and New Hampshire - a feat accomplished just twice, by President Jimmy Carter in 1980 and former Vice President Al Gore in 2000.
Dean is counting on support he built last year to earn him at least a close second today. But his critics say that if Dean can't win New Hampshire - his best state - he may not be able to win anywhere.
With polls indicating that his slide bottomed out late last week, Dean has predicted that a late surge would carry him to victory. But he struck a more cautious stance during a mid-day rally in Manchester.
Appearing with his wife, Dr. Judith Steinberg Dean, and West Wing star Martin Sheen at a downtown theater, Dean was asked by a supporter about his choice of a running mate.
"Since I haven't won a primary yet, I thought I'd put that off for a while," Dean responded. "Assuming, with your help, we get a lot farther down the road, starting tomorrow ... that discussion is for another time, after we have proved that we can win the nomination."
Dean has said he intends to compete in most of the Feb. 3 primary states, regardless of where he finishes here. Still smarting from coverage of his campaign stumbles, he said he'd been hurt by six to eight weeks of efforts by the news media to "take down" his candidacy.
"They're an entertainment business, as much as a news media," he said on CNN. "I think you report the news, you create the news and that's what you guys do."
Dean acknowledged that news organizations didn't make up his much ridiculed caucus-night speech. "But you chose to play it 673 times in one week," he said.
The intense focus on Dean's difficulties has made it tougher for other candidates to attract attention from the voters in New Hampshire over the past week.
Edwards has yet to receive the post-caucus bounce in the polls that earlier presidential contenders got, despite finishing a surprisingly strong second. The North Carolina senator would be happy to settle for a third-place finish today, ahead of next week's primary in South Carolina, which he has called a must-win for his campaign.
But Edwards remained in a virtual dead heat for third in the polling, along with two candidates who skipped Iowa and invested heavily in New Hampshire: Lieberman, the party's 2000 vice-presidential nominee, and Clark, a novice candidate who has attracted heavy financial support and the backing of many former Bill Clinton aides.
Over the past week, Clark has been fading in the polls. He campaigned in all 10 New Hampshire counties yesterday.
"Unlike all the rest of the people in this race, I did grow up poor," Clark said at a stop in Keene, N.H. "I didn't go to Yale. My parents couldn't have afforded to send me there."
Three candidates - Kerry, Dean and Lieberman - graduated from Yale, as did Bush.
Lieberman, professing to detect "Joe-mentum" in the closing days here, is competing with Clark, and others, for independent voters. Independents may vote in either party's presidential primary here. Politicians estimate that independents will cast perhaps 30 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary.
But the independent vote is expected to fragment; none of the Democrats has appeared to attract the same degree of support that Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona did four years ago to upset Bush in the Republican primary.
Yesterday, McCain returned to campaign for Bush, who is due to make a stop Thursday in this state, which he won by fewer than 10,000 votes in 2000.
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